An acoustic-phonetic perspective on the phonological behavior of the rhotic tap

In this paper I argue, drawing on data from an experiment on /r/ in Romanian and data from other languages, in favor of the hypothesis that the rhotic tap ([ɾ]) contains one vocoid preceding, and another one following the constricted interval (cf. Stolarski 2011, among others). Specifically, these vocalic elements are mid-high and relatively central, as the acoustic analysis shows. I then discuss how this segment’s encompassing vocalic elements might make the phonological behavior of the sound clearer. The argument put forth is that this structure is precisely what allows the tap to exhibit sonorant behavior and even pattern with vowels.